Keubiko
by Ea Skyrah
Summary: One of her Uncle's greatest falls was expecting her to fall right along. Shame she was meant to rise. Elorcan AU.


A dark-haired girl saw herself on a throne of ripped papers with messy, scrawled handwriting of all her bleeding emotions no one cared to read, for she was invisible as the wind and only felt when strung along by higher thoughts and emotions. — Ea Skyrah

Feel free to PM prompts!

 _a state of exhaustion inspired_ _by acts of senseless violence_

* * *

"Get up," an ever familiar voice snarled into her ear, a rasp that shivers racing down her spine and chills running through her arms.

Elide forced herself out of the clutches of sleep, where even peace dared not to follow. Vivid claws of death's grip and destruction's havoc followed her in the soundless realm, where not another soul save for already shredded one heard and swam the misery.

She was drowning, and drowning, and drowning.

A heavy presence wrapped around her neck, and Elide choked on the chains, her throat adjusting to the tightness. No scream left her as another set of shackles unclipped from the wall and dragged across the floor, her body following, limp and frail. The constant chain on her ankle yanked forward, flares of pain shooting up her shin and tendons.

Her overseer's grubby hands held no mercy as he walked up the steps, dragging her leash. Her own ribs and bones slammed along the asphalt, old scars reopening against the unsmoothed stone's sharp edges.

Elide Lochan squinted into the brightness as soon as the metal door flung open, the chattering of life filling her ears, the smell of rotten, decay things no longer swarming her nose.

Her senses had only been replaced by a new time of the deteriorating perishing and soon ceasing.

Elide Lochan nearly wept as she realized that the song of birds and flutter of blowing petals no longer teemed within her lands, but swarmed with broken bones and skulls, pools of red. Sickly stenches blew past her, the shouts and ringing of horrid curses draining out the elation the breaths of fresh air strung along.

The dark-eyed man slapped her harshly across the face, her cheek stinging in protest. He gripped her chin, nails digging into her peeling skin.

"Did you hear what I said?" he growled, a lecherous breath pouring over her face.

"Yes," Elide whispered, her voice croaking. She had stopped listening when she knew what her final words would be.

"You know what you have to say?"

"I do."

With a smug, satisfied smirk, her Uncle Vernon took the long collar off her neck, and she silently drew in the fresh air not a murky damp and full of the infectious exhalations of concoctions.

Except the shackle around her ankle still dragged against the forgotten land, her past of flowing crystal rivers and rising revivals almost a figment of her nostalgia.

She watched him click open the large briefcase in the other hand, and widened her eyes at the piece of drooping, white material, larger than her whole body.

Vernon looked her in the eye. "Put it on."

So she did. Her body was almost naked anyways with Vernon's handling and the lashes that had torn at her clothes. Only scraps that adhered to her skin from the moist summers offered a little shield of pathetic protection.

His face twitched, and then he grabbed her arm roughly, jerking her forward into his arms.

She trembled at the raw viciousness emanating from him.

"Make one wrong move and I'll punish you."

She nodded, her skin prickling. Too long had she endured the chains and the lock, the stinging whip, the suffocation of everything. Too long had she an eternity of silence to fill with her thoughts and gift her with the companion of pain. Too long had her soul been trapped in another's own sick and twisted one.

Vernon looked down at her in distaste, and Elide could see the suppression of violence in those veins. Her dress was just a temporary barrier before she would be on her knees again, grovelling and pleading and bleeding.

The vicious cycle, except this one would be a momentous mark towards a true future of slavery and suffering.

"You haven't seen pain yet," Vernon smiled, licking his lips. "So if you think out of place just once, then think again." He leaned in closer, calloused hands stroking her rough cheek. "I have not taken you completely yet. Remember that, Elide."

She turned her head away. She did not have to see the triumphant smile on his face. History had been written by the victors, but to Elide, the victors were the predators.

And she was the prey.

Vernon grabbed her hand and they trudged forward, her legs tripping along the coarse ground that reeked of the forgotten and the deceased. At the fork of the path bridging into two, one crimson red, the other pure darkness, Vernon withdrew his arm.

Bruises reappeared where his hands had been, the purple and red sores marring her body. The chain drew around her ankles.

Vernon nodded at her, and jerked his chin to the red path. Slowly, he stared at her, an unfathomable look pinched onto his face.

Finally, he smirked, and said, "You know what you have to say at the end?"

Elide managed a weak nod, a faint stirring crescending within her stomach. "I do."

Vernon disappeared within the trail of pitch-black.

The trail rose as a line of red petals drenched with lacquer, and her legs slowly wobbled as she ambled up. Her calves burned, her muscles following atrophy's hand. The sun hung lowly, another drooping, listless figment of her fractious form.

There was no music as she walked into the clearing. There was no elation as she stared into the faces of the Ilken.

This was wrong. This was not her ceremony. This was a binding of a curse.

Elide walked up the dead trunks severed horizontally. She could see Vernon's eyes greedily drinking her in as she steadily yet slowly came to the top of the steps. At the crest, she watched as all shadowed heads turned towards her.

Not a single face to represent who she once was.

All darkness.

Even the table was draped in black, the only contrast her white dress, the hem laced with dirt and the smudges of red from the tortuous walk.

The gleam of golden forged together with intricate intersections and sacred symbols blinded her momentarily. A sharp breath escaped her. Next to the crown was another one, looped together with silver metal and smooth surfaces of crystalline and onyx orbs. Together, both pieces pulsed pure power.

A family heirloom.

Ancient and powerful and symbolic.

Elide watched her Uncle Vernon greedily ravenously drink in the sign of the two ancient facets of the Lochan line.

Two crowns that rightfully were hers.

Two crowns that successfully flew from her fingertips.

Two crowns that guided her people into once peace, a mission she had failed.

She stood at her Uncle's sign, ignoring the drumming of her heartbeat that no longer fluttered dimly like a cut hummingbird's wings. Darkness seemed to flex around her, and she felt her insides answering the call of vengeance.

A robed figure emerged the the other side where two bent trees swooped down in arching angles. The gray and tattered material covering the frail frame came to a halt in front of the table and gradually raised his hand, where the faintest whispers of melancholy halted.

The hood fell, and Elide stared at the face of an elder whose sunken in face boasted only wrinkles.

The priest stared at the two crowns for what seemed centuries as her ankle threatened to give out under her. By the impatient look on her Uncle's face, she could assume he felt the same way. Right when Vernon's fists clenched, the priest cleared his throat and began his opening speech to the dark crowd.

Elide's eyes glazed over.

This was not life.

This was death.

Silence bestowed upon them, and Elide jerked upright, and realized that all eyes were on her. Vernon stared at her with his mouth set in a grim line.

The priest placed a hand over his heart. "Do you, Elide Lochan, take Vernon as your husband, to cherish and love him until death do you part?"

 _Until death._

Death.

Vernon's icy stare had her rooted in place.

The practiced words, the first words she'd remembered from being imprisoned into this hellhole. The words that she'd repeated over and over again in hopes of one different alteration.

Her ankle throbbed, and Elide closed her eyes.

"I do."

She didn't see if Vernon dared to visibly sigh in relief. The priest hobbled back to the stand, and drew a curved, black blade, the hilt wavering in his feeble grip.

Vernon took the blade, and held out his wrist.

No scars, no blemishes.

He pressed the cold steel into Elide's palms.

The priest droned, "Complete the blood oath and I declare you both joined in matrimony."

A goblet sat on the platform, hot coals cracking within the metal. Elide and Vernon were ushered at polar sides of the ancient cup, her uncle's steely and dark eyes triumphant. He already wore the outlines of the crown on his head, and Elide felt sorrow and shame shoot through her veins.

This should not be legacy.

She watched Vernon slash his wrist, and three drops of blood plunked into the goblet, a flare of flames and sizzling of sucking.

The priest handed the bloodied dagger and pressed the warm hilt into her palms.

Vernon exhaled loudly, licking his lips once again.

Those lips had sucked on her skin, had ruined her sense of affection, had promised to do worse.

She gripped the dagger.

But did not hold out her wrist.

The darkness expanded.

Elide Lochan lashed out and curved the dagger horizontally. Let the turbulence and chaos raging within her brewed and cultivated by her own Uncle, and allow her wrist to flick.

A clean slice, thick and heavy. Deadly.

She stared at the dissembled, and back up at the priest whose jaw had dropped open.

"He can't punish me if he's dead," she said by way of explanation.

Disbelief flooded the priest's face, and she didn't blame him.

The need to survive and the call of freedom had been too large, and she had answered her dreams, of which Vernon's death the first step to walk down her own path carved for and by herself.

She watched the remains of Vernon's head loll to the side, mouth gaping and eyes struck open in an almost betrayal. The squelching noises came to a halt while Vernon's own cold body laid perfectly still, a redemption fulfilled.

A beheading. A tipping back from the unbalanced scales.

She felt a dark pulse wrap around her, flattening against her skin. Almost a soothing.

The priest held up the queen's crown again, discarding the king's onto the golden table.

Elide shook her head, staring at the golden laurels that had belonged to her ancestors.

She was the rightful queen of Perranth and Morath. Yet since she was the last heir, she was the rightful king.

She was wear what was hers.

She would reclaim what had been stolen from her.

The priest shook his head. "You cannot be a king."

Elide Lochan straightened her spine and squared her shoulders. "Then you can be the king. But watch the queen conquer."

She'd start her own vicious cycle if she could not reclaim what was hers.

"No," a deep, male voice rasped.

The priest faltered, grasping the king's crown in one hand, the queen's in another.

Elide turned around.

Eyes dark as the night sky streaking without a single star, blazing an aura of will and dominance, erecting a strength of a thousand men, a towering stature of corded and roped muscle slashed Elide's sight.

Her heart dropped.

She knew the stories those in Morath's dungeons whispered and weeped. Listened the each word carefully as each syllable were her salvation. She knew of this male, this dangerous, feral creature. The Hunter who had been to Hell's entrance and survived unscathed. Those who were his prey always failed the game. Those who were his prey did not live to see another day. Those who were his prey became a forgotten speck of ash in history.

The Hunter's rage stormed the flames of Hell, with a heart impenetrable as Heaven's gates.

The Devil's Mind, Death's Right Hand, the Executioner.

Elide Lochan met the onyx eyes of none other than the Lorcan Salvaterre, the Silencer.

She did not wished to be silenced today, not tomorrow. Or the next.

"He is not king," the dark-haired male commanded, voice carrying voluminous depths. "Nor are you or I."

Elide sucked in a breath.

The priest coughed. "Who am I crowning?"

Elide twirled around to the robed figure, and breathed out, "I am the queen and the king. I am the rightful heir denied what was mine."

She would not stay silent.

The Hunter simultaneously growled, "The girl has killed my prey, and thus I claim her in return."

The darkness fell around them.

Elide could not turn around to see Lorcan Salvaterre's expression as the priest hurried forward and crowned her with the king's emblem, and pressed the queen's crown into her hands, tainted with the blood of the now deceased corpse.

And the shouts began.


End file.
